“Big Dams do the opposite of what their Publicity People say they do…For all these reasons, the dam-building industry in the First World is in trouble and out of work. So it’s exported to the Third World in the name of Development Aid, along with their other waste like old weapons, superannuated aircraft carriers and banned pesticides."

This is about the highly controversial Sardar Sarovar dam, which concerns at least three states in north west India. I have to say that I had never heard of this vast project before. But nevertheless this is an age old story which would be recognised in pretty much any other country in the world, that ole familiar combination of lies, greed and deception by a small group of elite in the case The Iron Triangle (dam jargon between politicians, bureaucrats and dam construction companies).

“Most rivers in India are monsoon-fed. Between 80 and 85% of the flow takes place during the rainy months.” She also shows the many ways in which dams can alter the delicate balance of the rivers. We see how that the construction of the dam has a disproportionate effect on the poorest and neediest in society, in this case the Adivasi (The Indigenous people of India) and the Dalits (The lowest in the archaic caste system often referred to as The Untouchables).

This is the first time I have read Roy. This was written exactly 20 years ago, yet her direct no nonsense approach has not aged a jot, proving that quality writing really can be timeless. She attacks from all angles, remaining measured, direct and devastating throughout. The clarity of her argument is so clear that it really drives home her point. This reminds us what great journalists can do when they are at their best. Giving a voice to the lost, mute and forgotten who never get a platform to be heard or understood.

“Between 1947 and 1994 the World Bank’s management submitted 6,000 projects to the Executive Board. The board hasn’t turned down a single one…India is in a situation today where it pays back more money to The Bank in interest and repayment instalments than it receives from it…Over the last five years (1993 to 1998) India paid The Bank $1.475 billion more than it received.”

The second, smaller essay is on India’s bizarre and terrifying nuclear weapons project. Again Roy makes so many great points and shows how reckless, hypocritical and dangerous the logic (or lack of) behind it all.

“India’s nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people…the truth is that it’s far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.”

This is "make your blood boil" journalism by the author of The God of Small Things, which I loved. Brought to my attention by my sometimes radicalized family, Arundhati Roy's book consists of essays on India's gigantic dam projects, and on the advent of the Indian nuclear bomb.

Roy describes the displacement of thousands of Adivasis (indiginous southern Indians) resulting from huge dam projects sponsored with inadequate planning by the World Bank. It is an outrageous example of the alienation of government from its people, and puts me at a loss as to how to have some impact on it. I have, however, been googling news items which describe Roy's encounters with Indian authorities. She is, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an independent government of one, and a conscience to her nation.

Some people in India told me this was propaganda, but I still like it, and everything else she writes.

Roy calls for specificity, something I often lack in my own writing. I often get carried away in prose, in sentiment, failing to include the details that will actually make a difference. "Can we unscramble it?" she asks, referring to the mess we have made of our connections to and understanding of the planet, to democracies that are anything but free, to "development" that takes more than it gives. "Maybe," she response. Maybe we can unscramble this mess. "Inch by inch. Bomb by bomb. Dam by dam. Maybe by fighting specific wars in specific ways. We could been in the Narmada Valley." (81).
And this she does throughout the entire book. In a mere 80 pages, she works through the consequences of these dams (water logging, displacement, destruction of farmlands and forests, more water devoted market crops, more people living in slums), costs not taken into account, corruption in the system at every level, disregard for World Bank evaluations of human and planetary impacts of the dam (which disregard is often that of the WB itself), specific speeches made, specific promises promised and broken, specifics of dam technology, specific places affected, specific people, specific numbers, specific stories.

A few quotes:

"The millions of displaced people in India are nothing but refugees of an unacknowledged war. And we, like the citizens of White Ameirca and French Canada and Hitler's Germany, are condoning it by looking away. Why? Because we're told that it's being done for the sake of the Greater Common Good. that it's being done in the name of Progress, in the name of the National Interest (which, of course, is paramount). Therefore gladly, unquestioningly, almost gratefully, we believe what we're told. We believe what it benefits us to believe. Allow me to shake your faith." (21)

"The Bargi dam near Jabalpur...cost ten times more than was budgeted and submerged three times more land than the engineers said it would. About 70,000 people from 101 villages were supposed to be displaced, but then they filled the reservoir (without warning anybody), 162 villages were submerged. Some of the resettlement sites built by the government were submerged as well. People were flushed out like rats from the land they had lived on for centuries. They salvaged what they could, and watched their houses being washed away. One hundred and fourteen thousand people were displaced. There was no rehabilitation policy. Some were gviven meager cash compensation. Many got absolutely noting. A few were moved to government rehabilitation sites. The site at Gorakhpur is, according to government publicity, an 'ideal village.' Between 1990 and 1992, five people died of starvation there. The rest either returned to live illegally in the forests near the reservoir, or moved to slums in Jabalpur." (35)

"'India will go on,' they'll tell you, the sage philosophers who don't want to be troubled by piddling current affairs. As though 'India' is somehow more valuable than her people." (42)

"So far, the Sardar Saraovar reservoir has submerged only a fourth of the area that it will when (if) the dam reaches its full height. If we stop it now, we would save 325,000 people from certain destitution. As for the economics of it -- it's true that the government has already spend Rs. 7,500 crores, but continuing with the project would mean throwing good money after bad. We would save something like Rs. 35,000 crores of public money, probably enough to fund local water-harvesting projects in every village in all of Gujarat. What could possibly be a more worthwhile war?" (42)

"The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. It's a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlistt, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warrior will be needed. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, journalists, students, sportsmen, painters, actors, singers, lovers...The borders are open, folks! Come on in." (43)

"Suddenly they can't trust their river anymore. It's like a loved one who has developed symptoms of psychosis. Anyone who has loved a river can tell you that the loss of a river is a terrible, aching thing. But I'll be rapped on the knuckles if I continue in this vein. When we're discussing the Greater Common Good, there's no room for sentiment. One must stick to the facts. Forgive me for letting my heart wander." (50).

Will finish later. Notes on settlements on page 53, the political fanfare of big development projects on page 60, religion/politics 63, publicity/greenwashing/whatever the equivalent of greenwashing is for affected tribal communities on pg 63-65, salinization/fish/waterlogging/lack of pilot projects for new computer projects 65-75.

To finish, rather ironically, another (not-too-specific) quote on the importance of specificity, which follows a discussion of Ghandi's and Nehru's respective approaches to nationalism and progress, both of which have their failings:
"It's possible that as a nation we've exhausted our quota of heroes for this century, but while we wait for shiny new ones to come along, we have to limit the damage. We have to support our small heroes. (Of these we have many. Many.) We have to fight specific wars in specific ways. Who knows, perhaps that's what the twenty-first century has in store for us. The dismantling of the Big. Big bombs. big dams, big ideologies, big contradictions, big countries, big wars, big heroes, big mistakes. Perhaps right now, this very minute, there's a small god up in heaven reading herself for us. Could it be? Could it possibly be? It sounds finger-licking good to me."